A New Theory of Fiction

What does it take to write fiction that comes close to the truth? Tayama Katai answers with the experience of a working novelist, testing every easy assumption about talent, inspiration, and literary success. For him, reading matters, but so does direct contact with life; a polished sentence means little without the power to see and depict.

Across ten sections, he examines description and narration, artistic structure, the different demands of short stories and novels, and the uneasy partnership of imagination and fact. His examples range from Japanese contemporaries such as Kunikida Doppo and Shimazaki Tōson to Flaubert, Maupassant, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. The discussion finally turns toward the suffering of the artist and the mystery that resists even the closest study of reality.

A central figure in Japanese naturalism, Katai brings conviction, impatience, and personal vulnerability to this sustained address to younger writers. First published in 1917, these essays offer both a practical account of literary craft and a revealing statement of one writer’s artistic faith. This complete new English translation includes brief explanatory notes.